The Trouble With Xi Perhaps Begins With Mao
In October 1946, a young American journalist and Communist sympathiser named Sidney Rittenberg decided to meet Mao Zedong, a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party, at the party headquarters Yan’an in Shaanxi Province. In his memoir ‘The Man Who Stayed Behind’, Rittenberg — who arrived in China two years prior with the American army as a soldier — writes how he was taken to the weekly dance party at the HQ where Mao was dancing energetically, but stopped as soon as he saw the then 25-year-old Charleston, South Carolina newsman, shook his hand and said, “We’d like to welcome an American comrade to join in our work.”
Mao was so fascinated with America that he invited the journalist to his place to stay over for two days to talk about the country he liked so much (Mao was not alone; Zhou En Lai, Liu Shaoqi, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and other Communist Party stalwarts did the same, and they all watched Laurel and Hardy movies together with Rittenberg). Mao never invited experts of any other nationality, just Americans. Rittenberg later spoke about how Mao, whose school teacher was a liberal (Mao later married this teacher’s daughter) and had inculcated the ideas of Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson into his class, leading Mao to believe that Jeffersonian democratic principles could actually steer Chinese politics.
However, the events that led to World War II led Mao to change his mind, and he came to believe that Western nations would never let China evolve into any such democracy, and he embraced Lenin-style authoritarianism.
This turned the 20th century on its head.
Rittenberg ended up as Mao’s confidante and stayed in China until 1980. His linguistic ability, his cultural assimilation, and his proximity to the political elite in China meant that he became the country’s primary interpreter of sorts for the Western world during the tumultuous Cold War days. Despite being jailed for 16 years, Rittenberg — who died in 2019 aged 98 — never lost his love or loyalty for China and kept going back to study the country.
There is no shortage of expert interpreters of China’s politics and philosophy today (Takshashila’s very own Manoj Kewalramani is a leading name), but under Xi Jinping, Beijing’s distrust (and rejection) of Washington and the rest of the Western world has only increased. Peaked, some would say.
To be sure, China was never the epitome of transparency. This is why Takshashila’s Discussion Document on ‘Assessing the Latest Developments in the Chinese Economy’ is an important insight into what is happening in Xi’s China.
Anushka Saxena, Amit Kumar, and Manoj Kewalramani break down six economic headwinds that are important to understand the current state of the Chinese economy — weak exports due to structural challenges and geopolitical tensions, weak domestic consumption, demographic challenges, the stressed real estate sector, local government debt, and finally, foreign investor confidence.
“The real estate sector bubble is a major risk. The sector accounts for 25% to 30% of China’s GDI. A steady slump in housing sales, property prices, and property development investments has exposed the vulnerabilities of overdependence on the sector for economic growth. Despite the easing of credit-raising and mortgage restrictions since November 2022, the sector continues to be plagued with declining investment, excess inventory, falling prices, poor sales, and delayed deliveries. All of this impinges on the health of key developers, and thereby on the banking sector.”
You can read the Takshashila Discussion Document here.
Manoj adapted the Takshashila Discussion Document for an excellent explainer Op-Ed on China for Moneycontrol.com. You can read the Op-Ed here.
China, Interrupted
To continue from where Anushka, Amit, and Manoj left, we ask the question, is China’s real estate economy seeing a 2008 moment? The above trio has partially answered that question in their Discussion Document.
“A financial crash is unlikely because of the centrally controlled nature of China’s banking sector, as well as the availability of enough liquidity (especially in the form of reserves). The fact that the government is choosing not to go down that route at the moment appears to indicate that it wants to redress the moral hazard that underpins the sector.”
Nitin Pai, Takshashila’s co-founder and director, in his column for Mint, writes that we must make ourselves acutely aware of what is going on in China.
He writes:
“In 2018… soon after Xi Jinping changed the rules to allow him to remain president for as long as he likes… China went from institutionalised to personalised rule. Beijing conducted witch hunts against private entrepreneurs, entertainment industry icons, technology industry leaders, and foreign executives before strangling the entire economy with a mindless zero-covid policy. Xi’s regime picked fights with every one of its important neighbours, got into a trade war with the US, and contributed to the rollback of global multilateral trade that powered China’s rise.”
For good measure, Nitin adds,
“Greater economic freedom can ameliorate China’s woes. When individuals and firms find ways out of their problems, the economy does so too. Yet, the Xi regime’s predilection for state control and the imposition of its preferences on the whole country is taking China in the opposite direction.”
Nitin’s excellent column can be found here.
Puliyabaazi turns 200
The story goes that one day, a man of exceptional linguistic talent came to Emperor Akbar’s court. He displayed his prowess at speaking several languages with ease, and so consumed was he with his ability that he challenged the king to guess his mother tongue. The flummoxed Akbar delegated this task to Birbal, his trusted aide.
That night, when the polyglot was sleeping soundly in his chamber, Birbal arranged for a pot of water to be thrown on him. He woke up startled and gave the choicest of filthy words to express his anger. The next day in court Birbal correctly announced the learned man’s mother tongue, much to the arrogant man’s chagrin. When Akbar asked Birbal how he deduced this, he replied that no matter how many languages a man knows, he will swear only in his mother tongue.
We can assure you that our soft-spoken deputy director Pranay Kotasthane does no such thing, but he does speak several languages fluently. One of them is Hindi, and he uses that to great effect with an excellent policy podcast called Puliyabaazi.
Last week, Pranay and his partners in crime — tech entrepreneur Saurabh Chandra and writer-cartoonist Khyati Pathak — recorded and broadcast the 200th episode of Puliyabaazi, the extremely entertaining, enlightening, and enriching (please don’t miss the awesome alliteration) with one of India’s pre-eminent policy intellectuals — the redoubtable Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
There could be no better guest than PBM, as he is fondly referred to in academic circles, for the 200th episode and talk about the state of our democracy.
There is a lot to take in from their conversation, but without being overwhelming because of the sheer erudition of the participants. Why don’t you head onto the podcast here?
And, We Are Back To Discussing China
On August 30, NDTV published a story (authored by one of its editors Vishnu Som) on its website that said:
“Sixty kilometres east of the Depsang Plains in Northern Ladakh, Chinese forces have begun carving tunnels and shafts into a hillside along a narrow river valley to construct multiple reinforced shelters and bunkers for soldiers and weaponry. The site identified in this report lies in Aksai Chin, East of the Line of Actual Control, in territory held by China and historically claimed by India.”
This is as serious a development as any for India.
Dr Nithiyanandam, the head of Takshashila’s Geospatial Programme, wrote an excellent explainer on this in his Geospatial Bulletin.
“In the present era,” Nithiya explained, “military systems have increasingly relied on deploying radar installations to achieve critical capabilities in various areas such as surveillance, reconnaissance, target detection, tracking, and situational awareness. These capabilities are essential for adequate defence, intelligence gathering, and strategic decision-making and play an integral role in safeguarding national security interests.”
He added,
“Due to escalating political and military tensions, China has heavily fortified the region with robust military radar systems to monitor major conflict zones, including the LAC, to show their readiness towards any potential threat from India. Over the years, radar monitoring has consistently intensified, with mobile systems being replaced by permanent monitoring stations equipped with high-powered radars in critical areas. The altitude of the radar varies depending on the area being monitored and coverage requirements. Radar may be placed at a lower height where viewshed regions are to be monitored or when the intention is to protect hidden assets. However, some radar signals are picked up at strange locations far away from human settlements and the contested Indo-China border, nullifying the purpose of monitoring critical infrastructure or enemy intrusion.”
You can read the whole piece and subscribe to his remarkably unique bulletin here.
No Quad left behind
Bharat Sharma and Kingshuk Saha, research analysts at Takshashila’s Indo-Pacific Programme, write in the latest post of their Quad Bulletin that the upcoming meeting of Quad foreign ministers later this month is going to be a significant one.
The 2023 Quad Leaders’ Summit was held in Hiroshima in May earlier this year when all four leaders – Indian PM Modi, Japanese PM Kishida, Australian PM Albanese, and US President Biden met. In March this year, the foreign ministers had also met for the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. India will be hosting the Quad Summit in 2024.
Get all the Quad updates and analyses in one place here.
Lt Gen Prakash Menon explains what China is doing at the border… and it is not pretty
In his column for The Print, Lt Gen Prakash Menon explains that
“interconnectedness of events and diplomatic exchanges often provide clues to the state of power play that shapes relations between countries. Two recent events in the landscape of India-China relations seem to indicate that the outlook may not be encouraging. The first was the 19th round of military commander-level talks held on 13 and 14 August. Second — the 15th BRICS meeting at Johannesburg on 22 and 23 August.”
It is quite evident that the old Ronald Reagan principle of Trust But Verify may not even apply when it comes to India working with China to de-escalate the border situation. Forget verify, how do we even trust?
He further writes:
“One of the operational impacts of the 2020 Chinese aggression in Eastern Ladakh has been that PLA’s deployments now cast a darker shadow on the vulnerability of the DSDBO Road. It is a ‘threat in being’ that would albeit require a fairly large-scale offensive by the ground forces. In fact, the threat posed all along the northern border is a psychological component of the likely politico-military moves in the context of Chinese geopolitical competition with the US.”
You can read the full piece here.
Mapping the China Question
Around the end of August, China shot another cartographic arrow in India’s direction — it released a new “standard map” that included Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as its own territories.
This angered India, of course, and while China later downplayed the map after a backlash, this incident is just another exhibit of Xi Jinping’s diplomacy of aggression.
In this context, this discussion between senior journalist Neena Gopal and Ashok Kantha, former Ambassador to China; Lt Gen Prakash Menon; and Dr Nithiyanandam, Professor and Head, Takshashila Institution's Geospatial Programme, assumes significance.
They discuss what India must do now, given China’s relentless mischief at the border. You can watch the exchange here.
And there’s more…
Listen to two interesting episodes of Police Chowki - a special limited series on All Things Policy; one discusses the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 which is set to replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the second dissects the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which is set to replace the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 as the country’s primary criminal procedural law.
Javeed Ahmad (ex IPS & ex DGP of Uttar Pradesh) and Takshashila’s Shrikrishna Upadhyaya break down the various significant changes proposed in the Sanhitas, the extent of decolonisation of Indian penal laws and ramifications on the right to a fair and speedy trial, individual liberties and police powers.
The 36th Cohort of GCPP Begins!
Takshashila deputy director Pranay Kotasthane welcomed the 36th cohort of the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (GCPP) programme last weekend. The GCPP is easily one of India’s best-curated public policy programmes. We wish this cohort all the very best!
That’s all for this week. Take care!